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December 10, 2015

THE FOUNDATION

"Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils." —Benjamin Franklin, 1789

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Is Slavery Really Gone?

Wednesday marked the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which banned slavery. Barack Obama observed the occasion, saying, "A hundred and fifty years proved the cure to be necessary but not sufficient. Progress proved halting, too often deferred. Newly freed slaves may have been liberated by the letter of the law, but their daily lives told another tale." He's right that systemic oppression has often been a part of America — indeed, the human experience. He called slavery "our nation's original sin" and described all the ways the struggle against it has unfolded over the years. It should go without saying that slavery was (and is) a vile institution.
What Obama failed to mention, however, is his own party's long history of guilt on the matter. The Democrats' "Great Society" has done nothing but run up trillions in debt to continue poverty. As Mark Alexander wrote on the 50th anniversary of that travesty, "The human tragedy of LBJ’s soul-crushing 'welfare' programs is incalculable. A rapidly growing permanent underclass, one utterly dependent on the state for its day-to-day existence, now constitutes the Great Society." By design, Democrats benefit politically from that dependence and permanent racial grievance. Also by design, the first black president has only made race relations worse.
Ironically, Obama also noted that former slaves "couldn’t protect themselves or their families from indignity or from violence." That would be thanks in part to gun control. And that terrible circumstance remains today on Democrats' urban poverty plantations, where gangs often rule the streets and the law-abiding are subject to severe gun restrictions to go along with high crime. Gun control began as a racist proposition, and it effectively remains one.
While our nation has sometimes fallen short of its own ideals (we are human, after all), rather than perpetually fomenting racial discontent we should remember that Liberty is colorblind and strive to achieve it in every arena.
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There Are Limits to National Security Preventing Jihadi Terror

Some put their trust in government programs. Others put their trust in super computers and their metadata. But there is only so much security the U.S. government can provide. During a hearing before the Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee, Deputy Assistant Commissioner at the Department of Homeland Security John Wagner said if Islamic State terrorists tried to enter the United States by crossing the border like jihadists did before the Paris attacks, only "some of them would have" been stopped by law enforcement. "Some of them would have been prevented from traveling here to begin with," Wagner said. "It's been reported some of them were identified to governments as being a national security risk already. There's information we would have received from their travel details that we're confidence we would have identified had they travelled to the U.S."
This assessment comes on the heels of a Senate report that declared the U.S. borders were no hindrance to a violent jihadist who wants to do this country harm. But a jihadist doesn't need to cross the border in order to attack America. On Wednesday, a Muslim 20-year-old man living in Minnesota was charged for trying to recruit dozens of people to support terrorist groups, one of them being the Islamic State. And despite countless calls of help from government officials to root out extremism, leaders in several Muslim communities are unwilling to do so. Contrary to what the Left may claim, the Second Amendment most definitely isn't obsolete.
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CBO: ObamaCare May Eliminate Two Million Full-Time Jobs

Last year, a Congressional Budget Office study found out what's in ObamaCare. To summarize: "CBO estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 to 2 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024... The reduction in CBO's projections of hours worked represents a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024." The Office has just updated those figures through 2025, and the outlook even bleaker. The new report says, "The labor force is projected to be about 2 million full-time-equivalent workers smaller in 2025 under the ACA than it would have been otherwise." Furthermore, "[T]he estimated effect on the labor supply will be larger — a drop of 1.7 — if measured by the decline in total hours worked." The report flags three specific reasons:

"Health insurance coverage expansions — comprising exchange subsidies, rules governing health insurance, and an expansion of the Medicaid program — are together expected to reduce the labor supply by 0.65 percentage points.
"The HI surtax is expected to reduce the labor supply by 0.12 percentage points.
"Other major provisions — a penalty on larger employers that do not offer insurance coverage, an excise tax on certain high-premium insurance plans, and a penalty on certain individuals who do not obtain coverage — are together expected to reduce the labor supply by 0.10 percentage point."

This should provide Republicans more ammo as they work to repeal the law. Obama, of course, would never repeal his own signature achievement. But evidence of its harmful effects is working against Barack Obama, and Republicans — assuming they don't implode — have a good shot at taking the White House in 2017, at which point repeal is more attainable. The Hill reports, "Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) pledged last week, during his most significant speech to date, that he planned to roll out a replacement plan for the healthcare law next year." If — and that's a huge if — the GOP plays its cards right, we can be rid of this colossal failure as early as 2017. And the equivalent of two million full time jobs could be saved as a result.
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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS

A 'Fog' of Lying and Incompetence

By Arnold Ahlert

A damning email released by Judicial Watch (JW) puts another exclamation point on how far the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton have been willing to go to protect their respective reputations at the expense of the truth. At 7:19 p.m. ET, on Sept. 11, 2012 — only hours after the attack in Benghazi had begun — former Department of Defense Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash notified leadership at the State Department that “we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.” Unfortunately, things were already "spinning up" at the White House.
The specific forces mentioned in the email were redacted by the Obama administration, which had the temerity to cite Exemption 5 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), allowing it to withhold information based on the "Deliberative Process Privilege.”
The revelation stands in stark contrast to former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s testimony before lawmakers in 2013: "Time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response."
Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey echoed that assertion, insisting he stood by the assessment of an independent review board that concluded "interagency response was timely and appropriate, but there simply was not enough time, given the speed of the attacks, for armed U.S. military assets to have made a difference.”
Yet in a testy exchange with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Dempsey insisted assets weren’t sent because the State Department didn’t request them. "So it's the State Department's fault," McCain countered.
"I'm not blaming the State Department," Dempsey responded. "I'm sure they had their own assessment.”
They did indeed. "State colleagues: I just tried you on the phone but you were all in with S,” Bash wrote, in an apparent reference to then-Secretary of State Clinton. "After consulting with General Dempsey, General Ham and the Joint Staff, we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak. They include a [REDACTED]. Assuming Principals agree to deploy these elements, we will ask State to procure the approval from host nation. Please advise how you wish to convey that approval to us [REDACTED]. Jeremy.”
The email arrived after the first attack at the consulate, but before the second attack at the the CIA annex. It was during the second attack when Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed by mortar fire while engaging the attackers. That was seven hours after the State Department informed the White House — in writing — that the mission in Benghazi was under attack.
The revelation of Bash's email appears to vindicate Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of mission of the U.S. embassy in Tripoli at the time of the attack. During his own testimony in 2013, Hicks claimed he was rebuffed by Washington when he requested a stronger response to the attack, noting that “if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split."
Hicks also testified that a special-ops team in Tripoli was ready to drive to a C-130 aircraft to help those in Benghazi when their commander was ordered not to proceed. "He got a phone call from SOCAFRICA (Special Operations Command Africa) which said, you can't go now, you don't have authority to go now," Hicks said. "They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”
Instead, an after-the-fact team of six security officials from Tripoli and a Libyan military unit were deployed only to recover the dead and wounded, and to evacuate U.S. personnel from Libya. U.S. personnel who were taken to an airport and flown out of Benghazi.
JW President Tom Fitton aptly describes the despicable nature of what Barack Obama once asserted is “most transparent administration in history.” “The Obama administration and Clinton officials hid this compelling Benghazi email for years,” Fitton stated. “The email makes readily apparent that the military was prepared to launch immediate assistance that could have made a difference, at least at the CIA Annex. The fact that the Obama Administration withheld this email for so long only worsens the scandal of Benghazi.”
Yet there is also the unmistakable odor of a bipartisan cover-up. According to Matt Wolking, spokesman for the House Select Committee on Benghazi, the Committee was fully aware of the email. “The Select Committee has obtained and reviewed tens of thousands of documents in the course of its thorough, fact-centered investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attacks, and this information will be detailed in the final report the Committee hopes to release within the next few months," Wolking said. "While the Committee does not rush to release or comment on every document it uncovers, I can confirm that we obtained the unredacted version of this email last year, in addition to Jake Sullivan’s response.”
Really? Then why didn’t it come up during the eleven hours of Clinton’s testimony before the Committee? Wouldn’t it have been illuminating to hear Clinton’s version of why even Hicks’ modest request for a flyby was ignored? Wouldn’t it have been equally illuminating to know how Clinton, or any other State Department officials responsible for protecting Americans in harm’s way were able to determine that assets couldn’t get to the scene in time while the fighting was ongoing?
As recently as this past Sunday Clinton doubled-down on her infuriating mendacity, blaming the “fog of war” as the reason she blamed the attack on a film when she spoke to the families of the victims. At the same time, in an outburst of further brazenness, she insisted she never told family members a video was to blame for the attack. Hot Air’s Guy Benson notes the absurdity of such a claim: “This is a direct contradiction of very explicit memories shared on the record by multiple people who have far less incentive to lie than, say, a truth-challenged politician seeking power.”
A truth-challenged politician so used to fawning media coverage she apparently believes these sycophants will ignore corroborative accounts from several family members, and Clinton’s own assertion at Joint Base Andrews during the ceremonial return of the bodies of Sean Smith, Navy SEALS Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods and Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. That’s when she stated Americans have “seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with.”
As for Clinton’s fog of war assertion, it take tremendous gall to compare her disorientation to that which, for example, afflicted Navy SEALs who took out Osama bin Laden. Fog of war defined as a condition where an individual experiences a mental overload because the volume of the data received is greater than the speed at which the information can be processed.
In other words, Clinton is comparing sitting at a desk and speaking on the phone or sending emails with being in hostile territory and facing a potentially deadly conflict, while trying to take out the most wanted terrorist in the entire world. It doesn’t get more shameless than that.
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BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Tony Perkins: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sharia?
Joe Bastardi: Pictures Are Worth Thousands of Words
Ed Feulner: No Change of Course, of Course

For more, visit Right Opinion.

TOP HEADLINES

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report

OPINION IN BRIEF

Tony Perkins: "[W]e need to consider one of the unfortunate realities — in America and elsewhere — which is that the purpose of immigration has changed. It used to exist for people who wanted to come to America and assimilate. Now, in a dramatic shift from even our grandparents' generation, the 'sensitivity' and 'diversity' doctrine of the modern age is suggesting that we create cultural enclaves, where outsiders come to our country and live as if they never left home. ... What most people either don’t realize or willfully ignore is that only 16 percent of Islam is a religion — the rest is a combination of military, judicial, economic, and political system. Christianity, by comparison, isn’t a judicial or economic code — but a faith. So to suggest that we would be imposing some sort of religious test on Muslims is inaccurate. Sharia is not a religion in the context of the First Amendment. ... The bottom line is this: the U.S. Constitution is an agreement between people about how they’ll be governed. What good is it if people immigrate to America with the sole purpose of undermining that contract? We shouldn’t be embarrassed to say that we oppose those who want to come to the United States to destroy it."
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SHORT CUTS

Insight: "If the author of the Declaration of Independence were to utter such a sentiment today, the Post Office Department could exclude him from the mail, grand juries could indict him for sedition and criminal syndicalism, legislative committees could seize his private papers ... and United States Senators would be clamoring for his deportation that he ... should be sent back to live with the rest of the terrorists." —Frank I. Cobb (1869-1923)
Observations: "Bernie Sanders isn’t running to become president. He’s running to become George McGovern — the icon that inspires a generation of activists after him. He’s not interested in the war on terror, national security, or foreign policy in general. He’s interested in that darn one percent and assuring people that the reason they don’t have enough money is because the ‘millyunahs and billyunahs,’ as he calls them, are somehow taking it from them." —Jim Geraghty
The BIG Lie: "150 years ago, we ratified the 13th Amendment and broke the shackles that debased the American dream of justice and equality." —Nancy Pelosi (Actually, no, Republicans did.)
Too bad: “Ok, we’ve got a gentleman right there in the Yale cap. Oh my goodness. I’ve spent time there. That was Yale, not jail!” —Hillary Clinton making an awkward joke at a town hall meeting
Non Compos Mentis: "[T]he fact is that's why we need a national gun law so that there is no thought that even though one state may have good laws you can buy guns in another place." —Nancy Pelosi explaining why California's failure to stop the San Bernardino attack with gun laws means the whole nation needs the same laws
Demo-gogues: "We betray the efforts of the past if we fail to push back against bigotry in all its forms. ... Our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others, regardless of what they look like or where they come from or what their last name is or what faith they practice." —Barack Obama
"Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said ... that he will become a 'part-time vegetarian' to cut down his carbon footprint. If you’re wondering what a part-time vegetarian is, it’s someone who eats meat." —Seth Meyers
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Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis!
Managing Editor Nate Jackson
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Thursday, December 10, 2015

THE PATRIOT POST 12/10/2015